Three beings stood before the door of the wagon; a witch, a ghost, and a pirate. The witch raised the tip of a gnarled broom and knocked loudly upon the little door. The wagon shifted slightly as its occupant moved about inside. It grew still for a moment, and an eternity seemed to pass before the door finally opened with an ominous creak.
“Trick-Or-Treat!” came the eager, innocent voices of three young foals as they held out their hefty bags of candy. Their gap-toothed smiles disappeared as they were met with a blinding flash of light. Promptly following this was a crisp rustle as the three of them dropped their bags, staring ahead with a blank look, their eyes dull and unfocused. The foals stiffly turned around, and began a mechanical march down the way they had come before vanishing around the corner. Just as the trailing sheet of the ghost was out of sight, two azure hooves reached out from the doorway of the wagon, scooping up the dropped bags, and disappearing back inside. The door slammed shut.
Trixie snickered through a mouthful of bite-sized candy bars as she dropped the three bags upon a large pile of similar sacks that lay near her bed. The unicorn grinned with devious delight at having procured three more hauls to add to her growing collection. Her eyes glittered with greed, eager to begin digging through them. Chocolate bars, gummy worms, mints, lollipops gumdrops…They all teased her with their tantalizing tastes, just waiting to be eaten. Stepping over the mound of bags she laid herself down on her bed, and reached down into the closest one to resume her snacking. The magician’s grin grew wider as she pulled a full-size candy bar from within the recesses of the sack.
Trixie crossed her forelegs behind her head as he magicked the wrapper from the chocolate bar, thinking herself quite clever for the scheme she had devised. A simple memory spell was all it had taken to turn a night in which she was supposed to give candy into a night in which she received it. By erasing just a hair of memory from the would-be Trick-Or-Treaters, she could take their loot for herself, and they would never even know it was her.
The azure mare saw no moral problem with this. Her magnificence had been lost on this backwoods town, as they had the gall to call her a liar and a charlatan. So, rather than leaving right away, she remained for a few days until Nightmare Night, with a plan to get revenge and obtain the stuff she loved: Candy. It was fair in her eyes. They had dared to mock her, and she was simply getting even.
Besides, it would have cost money to buy her own candy. Trixie often found herself short a few bits thanks to the incident with the Ursa. If it hadn’t been for Twilight, that stupid, stupid Twilight, Trixie’s reputation would have remained untarnished, and nopony would question her abilities. So, by Trixie’s logic, it was mostly Twilight’s fault that dozens of little foals would go home tonight with no candy.
Trixie shuddered with delight as she bit into the candy bar, tasting a breath-taking mix of chocolate and peanut butter. She lazily took another bite, and then another, until it was gone. Smacking her lips she reached down for more. The mare indulged herself in a wide variety of candies, each one having some different taste that was equally delicious. She ate without restraint, there was more than enough to last her through Hearth’s Warming.
She was so enraptured by the ecstasy of taste that it never occurred to her that there would be a limit. Trixie didn’t believe it was possible to have too much candy. But then, she’d never possessed this much of it before. At last she came to a point where the candy began to bring her discomfort. The mare paused after discarding a wrapper as she heard an uncomfortable groan from her stomach. Trixie frowned guiltily as she was overcome with the inevitable result of overeating: a stomachache.
Letting out a grunt of displeasure, the magician rolled over on her side to face mound of sweets that lay beside her bed. It looked like she hadn’t even eaten a thing off of it. A smile crept across her face. Tomorrow she would feel better, and then she could have some more. Trixie magicked her blanket over her body as she curled up on her pillow and doused her lamp.
Something rustled in the darkness of Trixie’s caravan. It was faint, weak, like something small was moving. Had it been day nonpony would have paid any heed to it. But in the silence of the night, the little noise was enough to stir Trixie from her slumber. Her magenta eyes fluttered open. It wasn’t much different from being closed. The small windows of her cart let little light in even when it was day.
The unicorn reached out and lit her lamp. She squinted as the sat up from her pillow, her eyes adjusting to the magic
flame that danced inside of the light bulb. Trixie rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she gazed out at her cart.
Her eyes grew wide as the rustling began again. This time it seemed louder, as if whatever was moving was doing it more vigorously. The mare’s ears twitched as they instinctively searched for the source of the noise. An uneasiness came over her, adding to the dull pain of her stomachache.
Something wasn’t right.
Trixie jumped as the rustling occurred right next to her bed. The frightened magician scooted back against the wall, holding the blanket in her fore hooves as she crawled into the corner. She saw movement within her pile of plunder, as if something were digging its way out.
Trixie’s eyes shrank with fear as she saw a single piece of candy jump from the pile to her bed. It was a bite-size chocolate bar, the very same kind she had been eating when the last three Trick-Or-Treaters had come. She watched, her mouth open in terror, as it shed its wrapper and jumped toward her. She was so stiff with fear that it she couldn’t bat it away as it leapt into her mouth.
Trixie immediately reacted, sputtering for a moment before spitting it out. It instantly jumped back in again. Trixie raised her forelegs to pull it out with her hooves when she froze. She saw more candy projecting itself from the pile and bounding toward her. The unicorn whimpered as she clamped her hooves across her mouth. In mere seconds she was surrounded by a swarm of chocolate bars and gumdrops, leaping over and over at her face, trying to get past her hooves and into her mouth. The magician tried to crawl out of bed, but stopped as she realized she would have to uncover her mouth to use her forelegs. In a moment of forced decision, Trixie tore her hooves away and dashed for the door.
She squealed as her hooves touched not floor, but dozens of tiny gumballs that had rolled out in front of her. In a moment she was down on the floor, looking up at the ceiling as the animate food took advantage of her cry and leapt into her mouth. Before she knew what was happening, Trixie’s mouth was crammed full of chocolate. More and more came, but Trixie resisted with all her might, determined not to let any of it go down her throat.
Two of the gumballs that tripped her suddenly jumped not into her mouth, but into her nostrils. The mare’s eyes went wide as her only source of oxygen was cut off.
At that moment the wagon came to life with motion. Trixie turned to see that every piece of candy had come alive, descending upon her like a swarm of angered bees. The mare wanted to scream, but couldn’t. She swatted through them as she sat up, trying to pull the candy out of her nose and throat. She tried magic, but the constant cacophony of the swarm shedding their wrappers wouldn’t allow her to concentrate. All the while she was slowly losing air, unable to breathe.
Trixie let out a muffled groan of misery as she did the only thing she could to get oxygen. She began to chew, gnashing her teeth through the sweets in her mouth, reducing them to a thick, gooey mess. She grimaced as she swallowed the disgusting wad, and opened her mouth to inhale. It was filled again within seconds, and she was forced to repeat the horrible process. Biting through the mass in her mouth, the unicorn rose up and tried to make it to the door. She only succeeded in tripping over the gumballs again as they rolled under her hooves.
Trixie’s stomachache worsened tenfold as she was forced to keep eating to breathe. Candy came faster and faster into her gullet as she tried over and over to reach the door, but was met each time with a painful slam to the ground. At last she simply rolled onto her back, not bothering to get up. Tears came to her eyes as she saw where the candy was going. Her belly was gradually swelling to an absurd size, bordering on grotesque. It ached with a pain Trixie had never thought possible. The mare wailed through her candy-filled mouth, a primal plea for everything to stop. But it didn’t. She kept on eating and eating, forcing more and more into her body, until finally--
POP!
Trixie’s head shot off her pillow, the image of her distended gut exploding in a shower of mushy sweets and melted chocolate still fresh in her mind. The mare trembled like mad, panting in short, shallow breaths as a cold sweat rolled down her face. She grimaced as she touched a hoof to her belly.
It felt round. Perhaps a little bloated. But it certainly wasn’t hanging in tatters as she had expected it to be. Her fears somewhat calmed, the mare sighed and fell back on her pillow. Her eyes darted to the left as she saw the pile of candy nearby. The unicorn shuddered uncomfortably. As her terrifyingly vivid nightmare had shown her, maybe it was possible to have too much candy. Maybe she didn’t really need every piece she had…
…Stolen…
Trixie didn’t know if it was the overeating or not, but something suddenly didn’t feel right in her stomach. She turned to look away from the mound, but as she did she spotted something that made her feel absolutely terrible.
Written on one of the bags in thick, black marker, was a name. Michel. It was too neat to be the work of a foal, and so Trixie thought that one of his parents must have written it for him. All the same, a picture involuntarily sprung up in the mare’s mind of a young foal, eyes red from crying, nose running, sobbing so hard he was choking. Ordinarily this was a sight Trixie despised. She hated children, as they often were loud and obnoxious at her performances, and usually couldn’t pay attention to her for more than five minutes.
But her dislike of children was nowhere near as bad as her dislike of guilt. Guilt wasn’t something Trixie felt often. She usually found a way to blame someone else for her misfortune and the misfortune she brought on others. In this instance, she had blamed Twilight Sparkle for her theft of the candy. But now that guilt had reared its ugly head, Trixie couldn’t get herself to believe it, no matter how badly she wanted to. From her loose understanding of guilt, it wouldn’t go away until she had fixed her mistake. Or as she put it, ‘resolved the issue.’ Trixie didn’t think herself capable of making mistakes.
The magician lay upon her pillow in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling. She wanted to do something. She needed to do something. Or else she would forever think of herself as the ‘Mean and Gluttonous’ Trixie, a title she did not care for. The mare slowly sat up from bed and looked out at the pile of candy. Somehow, someway, she had to fix it. Her frown turned into something that looked to be a nervous smile. An idea had made itself present in her mind, one that, while brilliant, scared her.
Michel had given up hope of finding his candy. He had searched every house he’d visited, asked everypony who he had seen in the streets, but to no avail. The colt just simply couldn’t remember where he had lost it. Eyes to the ground in defeat, the sheet of his ghost costume dragging on the sidewalk behind him, he was trying his hardest not to cry. It was only candy after all.
There was a sudden flash of magenta light only inches away from his face. The colt drew back, fearing it was some monster coming to get him. But as the light faded away, something dropped right before his hooves with a loud rustle. As his eyes readjusted to the dimness of the streetlights, they grew wide. Sitting before him was his haul. Thinking it to be some kind of wishful illusion, the foal reached out to touch it. His eyes grew even wider. It was real.
In one final test he picked it up. Its great weight felt proved its existence. In fact, it felt even heavier than he remembered. Michel’s melancholy face vanished, and was replaced with a joyous grin. He wanted to thank whatever benevolent force had returned his candy to him. But he never found out what had done it. None of his friends did, either.
The first light of the sun shone over a bedraggled figure as she pulled her home behind her. The tired blue mare looked like she’d been to Tartarus and back, but had a look of peace upon her face. She quietly thanked whoever had invented the Lost-and-Found spell, which was the only way to ensure the candy reached its rightful owners. At the same time, she felt like cursing him. It was extremely complicated, had exhausted her magic reserves, and had made her horn feel like it was going to fall off. But none of that mattered. She was simply happy she had rid herself of the guilt.
Still…As she walked away from the town, Trixie turned back with an almost lamenting look. Sure, she didn’t have the guilt anymore. But she didn’t have the candy either. After several moments of staring, she finally turned back ahead.
“It would have all gone to my hips anyway,” she muttered.
